everything you see is ours
by stydias
Summary: This time she's running to something. –Brallie, semi-au, two-shot.


**a/n**: it's 6am, i haven't slept at all since yesterday, this was typed up in less than two hours and i haven't looked at it since (aside from the initial editing), and i'm literally running on coffee right now, but i'm too excited to wait to post it, so i apologize in advance for any errors. i will look over this and fix any errors after i've had at least 9 hours of sleep.

title is from andrew belle's oh my stars

* * *

_Tell me all about your foreign wars_  
_And all about the photographs that line your drawers_  
_Cause I know a lot about closing doors_  
_But not enough about what opens up yours  
_–andrew belle, oh my stars

* * *

She wakes up with his name on her tongue for the thirty-sixth day in a row.

* * *

Her bed is small, cramped, and uncomfortable. The room is no better – beige walls, beige carpet, and the intoxicating (and not in a good way) scent of paint. It is unfamiliar, despite the last month and a half she's spent camped out in Wyatt's mother's basement (well, technically his grandmother's basement). She's a nice lady, with kind eyes and dirty blonde hair and crinkles around her eyes and mouth from years of laughter despite all of the hardships she's endured. Not too nosey either, but still she manages to be just concerned enough so that it's obvious she cares.

She thinks about how lucky he is to have her, to have that, but then she thinks of her own mom – and then she thinks of the women who could've been her new moms and that makes her sad so she stops.

She thinks about him instead – dark hair, cut short, always neat; brown eyes like orbs of chocolate floating around his head, always so full of emotion; and that smile. God, that smile.

Her chest caves in just a little and she can't breathe properly – in the back of her mind she recognizes this is another one of the fits she's been having, the heavy and/or struggle with breathing, the watery eyes, the over-run of emotions like a stampede crashing down over her. She feels like the whole world could fall apart with just one more hit.

Footsteps interrupt her thoughts, heavy but not too heavy. She recognizes the steps instantly. Wyatt calls out to her from mid-way down the stairs – "Callie? Are you awake?"

She holds her breath and squeezes her eyes shut.

It's one of those mornings where getting out of bed feels like too much effort, like if she forces herself she'll fall apart. She's picked herself up, glued herself back together, she has. She's scared she'll come apart again, because she knows there's not much more of herself left to salvage.

She's lost all of her pieces, and the rest was given away to the boy with the chocolate eyes, magic fingers, and two moms – the boy who remains in California, with what's left of her broken pieces.

Wyatt leaves.

She counts his steps – _one, two, three _– just as she starts thinking about someone else, someone just as special as Brandon Foster. Jude Jacob, her brother. The person she swore to herself she'd protect.

The laugh chokes out, bitter and tasting bile on her tongue. Her eyes sting with tears and she hates herself for it. _Four, five, six. _She misses Jude, misses everyone actually. She hates herself a little for doing this – for running, for ruining everything, for all of it.

It's funny, how this is always how it ends for her. But maybe it's not funny, maybe it's just her. Because when the world gets too hard, what does Callie Jacob do?

_Seven._

She runs.

Callie thinks about Jude again, pictures his face and his nails with purple paint on them and his hair – she wonders if it's grown out any? Maybe he's cut it? She wonders if he hates her. Callie can handle a lot of people hating her, can handle the entire world being against her, as long as she's got him on her side. She never meant to disappoint him, really.

_Eight._

She just… doesn't know how to be stable; doesn't know how to fix things once their broken without cutting herself and everyone else up at the same time.

_Nine._

But – maybe she could learn?

_Ten._

* * *

"I'm going home."

Wyatt opens his mouth – she doesn't know whether he plans to protest or encourage her, and she never finds out. His mother interrupts him, a kind smile on her face. Her blonde hair is falling out of the bun it's been tangled up in for the last two days. She's still got her waitressing uniform on. There's a coffee stain on her skirt and a pen resting behind her ear and Callie idly wonders if she even realizes it's there.

"I think that's a good idea, Callie." She says, pausing to take a long sip of her coffee (four creams, one sugar) before she continues. Callie stares at the chip on the off-white mug, the rooster printed on it, the ring it's left on the counter – anything but Wyatt's mother's face. She realizes she's over-stayed her welcome, but she doesn't want to hear it. Not after everything.

She doesn't get that, however.

"If there's one thing any teenager needs, it's her family." Her short but lean fingers press down briefly over Callie's own unsuspecting ones. Callie glances up, frightened by this but unable to show it. Her face is blank, but her eyes are filled with emotion. She hates herself even more.

Finally, there are people around her, willing to help her – _wanting to help her _– and yet, she doesn't deserve it now. She has become the one person she swore she'd never be like: Her father.

He left when she was five and Jude was one. She can't remember him really, only a blurry outline of what his face most likely didn't even look like, a crooked nose (most likely from being broken four times as a teenager, as her mother had told her once in one of her rare moments when she was willing to speak about the man who'd abandoned them), cloudy blue eyes, a mouth that never smiled. That was that: All she had stored away in her mind of the man she called her father.

It was sad how she felt nothing but emptiness when she thought of him. Not even anger was present, as she'd burnt out all of that long ago. There was nothing but a numbness, because this is the way things were and anger wouldn't help, and a sense of fear because she never wanted to be like him.

Yet, she had left her brother alone.

Okay, so he wasn't alone. He had the Fosters, after all. They were wonderful – so wonderful, she did not deserve them. She had left for him, but thinking about it now, had that been such a good idea? What he needed wasn't just stability – what he needed was her, his big sister: The girl who'd always been there to shelter and protect him, no matter what it cost her… except when she hadn't been there.

The sad part was she felt more hatred for herself than she did _anything _at all towards her father.

Her voice startles herself out of her own thoughts, a blurted "thank you" to the blonde woman and her son, the boy with the house and the closet wall but when she looked into his eyes she didn't see chocolate and the disappointment was so overwhelming she had to glance away.

On their ride to Indiana, they had talked a lot about nothing as Callie sat with her windows rolled down and her arms stuck out, clinging to her phone in fear of losing it to the wind as she took mindless photographs of nothing and everything. She chose a filter and even typed in descriptions and hash tags for them. She never posted them to Instagram.

Wyatt sat in the driver's seat, eyes glued to the road but she'd catch him staring at her every now and then. She could tell he had been waiting for her to crack – to finally break apart and spill out like a piñata. She did not.

Callie Jacob was nothing if not strong.

It was near midnight when they reached Oklahoma. Wyatt pulled off of the highway and into the parking lot of a crowded motel. They did not get out, however, as they were sleeping in the car to save money. She thought it was an interesting idea, to park at a motel but not go inside to sleep, instead choosing to sleep in the backseat of his car.

It reminded her of the night at the house they got caught at, out on the lounge chairs, with the ocean and the stars spread out for them – back when things were simple. Back before she thought maybe she could love her soon to be adoptive brother, back before Wyatt had to leave for Indiana, back before she'd packed a bag on whim and went with him without telling a soul.

It was too much. The memories were too fresh in her mind and she could feel her throat closing up. Wyatt was already in the backseat, searching through the mess of stuff in the back for a pillow for them to share. She crawled back with him, onto his lap, interrupting him. He glanced at her with confusion filled eyes and a hint of hesitation. He knew, she _knew_ he knew. She'd known he'd known for a while now. But Callie felt like she was drowning in everything and she desperately needed an anchor – Wyatt could be that for her.

It was unfair on him, she realized a second after pressing her lips hard against his.

That didn't stop them from hooking up several times after, throughout her stay in his grandparent's basement. Not sex, never sex (she wasn't ready and wouldn't be for a very long time, after everything with Liam) – but lots of kissing and sometimes, crying.

It's hard for her to admit it, but she had used Wyatt to make herself feel better, and it had worked at the time, don't get her wrong, but now… Now, looking at him, she feels sick. In a way, this is her running once more.

And then she wants to laugh, wants to cry, wants to scream because she realizes something that gives her just a tiny bit of hope, which begins to blossom into something more in the pit of her stomach.

This time she's running _to _something.

She stands, pulling Wyatt's mother into a long hug, before turning and doing the same with Wyatt. "I'm sorry, I'm _so _sorry," she whispers into his ear as she holds him, just a beat longer than she held his mother. She's not in love with Wyatt, but she loves him. He's helped her breath and so much more, after all.

"Thank you." She repeats again, more firmly, eyes shining with unshed tears as she stares at the both of them for a long moment, before shaking her head slightly.

Well, now that that's sorted, she would only have to worry about the reactions she would receive upon returning.

Swallowing hard, she forces away the urge to stay, to curl back up in that small and uncomfortable bed, to surround herself with the smell of paint and whisper her almost-brother's name over and over to herself until she's managed to fall asleep.

She is Callie Jacob: She would not hide. Not this time. She would not let herself drown.

* * *

Five days later, she posts a single photograph on her Instagram account: A Greyhound bus, parked with its doors wide open, waiting to take her home.

Laughter and tears mix and mingle into the air around her. She does neither as she holds Wyatt tightly in her arms, before letting him go and smiling at him, lips quirked up at the corners, but a sadness in her eyes.

Wyatt has been one of the best friend's she's ever had in her entire life and though she doesn't love him as more than a friend and things had not worked out between them like that, she's sad to let him go.

"Take care of yourself."

She waves a single time, before turning and climbing onto the bus and choosing a seat towards the middle row.

She's finally going home.

* * *

**a/n: **i've desperately wanted to write something new for fanfiction for a long time, the last four months i'd say. i opened blank word document after word document, but nothing ever came out and then what did come out, i either hated it and erased it or it was relevant more to myself and one of my best friends, based upon a role-play we're both involved in and fictional characters of our own creations rather than well-known characters from a particular fandom.

i got such a positive response with my previous the fosters one-shots that i knew i wanted what i wrote to be for this fandom and I've had small ideas for a long time now but no real motivation to sit down and try to develop them until now.

i don't feel like i did callie's character justice for this first part, i feel like i made her both too emotional and too stable (as we saw from the promo she was busting in someone's windshield and seemed generally to be spiraling), but i wanted to post this regardless because i knew if i even tried to go back and change anything i'd written i'd fuck it all up and lose my plotline and inspiration completely and spend another four months wasting away, trying to write and coming up short.

thank you, to everyone who's read or reviewed any of my The Fosters fics, because I got so many reviews and god, like any other writer I'm so insecure about my writing, to the point where it makes it hard to write to start with because I glance at what I've got and all I can do is criticize myself as I type and the response I got from silly little one-shots made me so happy and want to do nothing but write as many Brallie one-shots as i could as a thanks to you guys for that. Instead, you're getting this two-shot (though it's quite mean of me to leave you with that cliff-hanger, huh? ;))

Okay, this author's note has gotten very long but basically, I just wanted to say **thank you so much **to everyone who reviewed/favorited/followed my previous brallie fics and I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in such a long time, but I figure I could make it up to you with the next chapter of this, if you'll stick around to read it, that is?

I'll make it worth your while. ;)


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